In this week’s episode of the knowledgebase Ninja Podcast, Gowri Ramkumar is joined by Tina Klein Walsh, Senior Manager at BlackBerry QNX Software systems. They discuss Tina’s journey of programming and documentation, the fundamentals of producing high-quality content, and the future of technical documentation

Key facts

• Tina’s LinkedIn
• BlackBerry QNX website
• Tina holds a bachelor’s degree in Math and Arts from the University of Waterloo
• Tina is certified in Hadoop Platform and Application Framework, Introduction to Big Data Analytics, Getting Started with Python, User Experience, Research & Prototyping, and The Data Scientist’s Toolbox
• Tina holds thirty-five years of experience in technical support and documentation, where she worked with renowned brands like QNX Software Systems Pen Inc, KeySpire Inc, Arxan Technologies, Vestronix, Demax Software, Nortel Networks, Versatel Networks, Eedo Knowledgeware, Cloakware Corporation, and many more.

Key takeaways

• Tina started her career in 1986 as an Application Developer (Engineering and Water Works) from the Town of Markham and started working as a C Language Programmer. She worked on programming and development for four years and in 1990, she switched her career into technical documentation and joined Demax Software as a Technical Writer
• Tina’s expertise in software programming and understanding of technology products served as a star to her technical writer career. Consequently, she has been contributing her part to the technical content curation industry for more than three decades now
  Currently, she is working as a Senior Manager at BlackBerry QNX Systems
• Tina thinks that managing technical writers and documentation workflow are the two most crucial fundamentals of producing quality documentation.
• She believes that we humans build up technology, not robots. So, by paying due attention to details; humans can define the technical aspect of any product better than anyone else.
• At BlackBerry QNX Tina’s team is responsible primarily for creating API documentation. Tina believes that technology integration streamlines the documentation workflow and that documentation reviews serve as the heart of content creations. Therefore, she dedicates most of her time to innovation and reviewing domains.
• She loves working with BlackBerry QNX, which is a software development platform. She appreciates the fact that there are only a few software development platforms available, and people have limited knowledge about it. Hence, the technical documentation role is the key for BlackBerry to explain the differentiation aspect of its products
• Tina believes that in 2022 and the years to come, with technological advancement and evolution constantly on the rise, there would be an immense demand for technical writers. She shares that BlackBerry QNX plans to recruit approx. two thousand technical writers
  Furthermore, Tina shares her excitement of meeting new writers, training, mentoring and coaching them
• Tina’s biggest influence
  Mark Baker – English animator and producer. Tina shares that Mark Baker is the most important person that helped her in learning technical documentation
  

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